Renn Zaphiropoulos

In my entrepreneurship class today we had the pleasure of being taught by Mr. Renn Zaphiropoulos. Today was the second of five classes we will have with him. Today he was talking mostly about priorities and expectations, but there were two things in particular that he said that really struck me.

The first relates some to my first blog post. It is about judging. He said “Never judge a person by the group they come from; you may be criminal, you may be hurtful. You can set a profile for a person according to the group they come from, but chances are you will be wrong. Open your heart.” I love messages like this. They illustrate that two very different people, Mr. Zaphiropoulos and myself, can have coinciding views. We don't have to be contrary to one another because of our differences, we can be comfortable with each other because of our compassion.

Next, he was talking about apologies. At first I was incredibly turned off by what his view seemed to be about apologizing. To me, I thought he was saying that apologies are useless and worthless and not worth saying. He said that apologies do nothing to help the situation of the victim. For reference he pointed out a situation where a politician has been cheating, so he gets on tv to apologize. Mr. Zaphiropoulos asked how this helps the position of that politician's wife at all. Naturally, I thought this was a little off. I felt that apologies are a very big and necessary part of life. So I questioned him about it. I asked him that shouldn't those sentiments be expressed anyway? He went on to explain more and I came to understand what he meant. He didn't mean that apologies are terrible. He meant that the way people use apologies and the rewards they expect to get from them are terrible. People think that if they just apologize then the sin should be completely absolved and they can be fully forgiven and entrusted again.

This is wrong, I think. Apologies definitely need to be expressed, but they must also be accompanied by actions of reparation and remedy. Most wrongs are impossible to completely undo, but we must try our best to mitigate the damages we have caused and make things as right as they can be after our mistakes. To simply say some words and then forget about and stop caring for our “victims” (using that word sounds really creepy to me for some reason) is not real apologizing and likely will not engender forgiveness from the Lord. I suppose I cannot speak for Him, but that just seems natural to me.

Mr. Zaphiropoulos' lecture today inspired me to be better in my apologies. I know I will make mistakes and cause hurt, even though I try my hardest not to. So when I do, I want to be better at fully apologizing AND making reparations as best I can. I want to show those I love and those around me that I care.